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Cheese Pancakes - A light, delicious meal

In the UK it is common to eat the largest meal in the middle of day; they call it "dinner". The evening meal is referred to as "tea". Tea or "high tea" as it is sometimes known is not always a meal of fresh cream, strawberry jam and scones. Tea is usually a light, cooked meal.

So, digging deep into my grandmother's cookery book from the 1950s, I found a nice easy recipe for "tea" that would make a great lunch or light evening meal here in Canada. The recipe is for cheese pancakes. Here is how I made them:

Ingredients

1 cup of plain flour

2 eggs

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup milk

1/2 cup grated cheese

Preparation

Mix the flour, cayenne and salt in a bowl

Whisk the eggs and stir into the flour until you have a smooth, stiff dough

Stir in the milk very slowly making sure the batter is smooth and lump-free

Leave the batter to stand in a warm place for about 30 minutes

Grate the cheese and stir it into the batter along with the baking powder

Lightly grease a crepe pan and cook the batter until the top surface is just solid

Flip the pancake and cook lightly on the other side

Serve immediately with your choice of garnish

John's Notes
My cheese pancakes turned out light and delicious. As you can see from the picture, I served them with some sliced ham, tomato and more grated cheese. I melted the cheese on top of the pancake by putting the plate under a grill.

I have eaten pancakes flat on the plate since I was a child. Some like to roll them, others like to fold them in half with a filling inside. You serve them any way you like; they will still taste just as good.

It really is worth making the pancakes from scratch because the flavour is markedly different to what you get from a package of pancake mix. Of course, this blog is for those who like to cook. Instant pancake mix users would be chased out of any decent kitchen by the ghosts of the 1000 chefs wielding 2-man Henckels that we mentioned last week.

Cussons Imperial Leather Soap

This is almost certainly the best known soap in Britain. It's distinctive scent, created in 1768 for a Russian prince, is loved by millions, both in Britain and abroad.

The soap with that very regal scent, originally called "Imperial Russian leather" was created in 1938. During the war years, when soap was rationed, Imperial Leather became very popular because of its reputation for lasting longer than regular soaps.

During the 1950s, Cussons began a TV advertising campaign. It was the appearance of Cussons ads during airing of popular TV shows that led to the popularization of the term "soaps" to describe popular TV dramas.